February 21, 2013

Hackles again! Can't get enough hackles in the big media... when the topic is Republicans.

A few days ago, the NYT lit into Ted Cruz: "Texas Senator Goes on Attack and Raises Bipartisan Hackles." And now, it's John McCain who's ruffling the feathers of big media, whose meme is The GOP died. So, whenever a Republican Senator is anything by docile and deferential, the Death-of-the-GOP meme must be swapped out long enough to discipline the outlier. The standard message is: Nobody likes you. Metaphor of choice: Hackles. You're raising hackles.

Here's my meme for that media discipline: When they say hackles, I say hacks. The article with the headline quoted in this post title is at The Washington Post. Here's some of the text:

The 76-year-old will be 80 when he is again up for reelection in Arizona in 2016. “I have seen a number of occasions around here where people have stayed too long,” McCain said during a recent interview in his Russell Senate Building office. “I have seen people who were real giants in this institution deteriorate, and unfortunately, we remember them at the end.”

Endings matter in politics. If McCain is approaching the exit, this term could determine how he will be remembered. (“In the way people think of him,” former GOP Arizona senator Jon Kyl said, “in the near term, it matters a great deal.”)

Right now, like it or not, the five-term senator is stuck in “get off my lawn” territory, lashing out at his friend-turned-foe Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary; incessantly tugging at what McCain is convinced is a coverup of the September attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya; lambasting the president; and railing against indiscriminate defense cuts. If hard-core conservatives feel burned by McCain’s resurgent reform spirit, the media that he once called his “base” have essentially written him off as an angry and sour loser who once went through a maverick phase but has, in the words of “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, gone on a “seven-year quest to negate every good thing he’d ever done.”

Wow. That's heavy-handed! They're saying: The GOP is supposed to be dead, and you're at the grave's edge, old man. Old, old man. You look old. Old men when the say what they mean and they say it with passion seem like they're saying "get off my lawn." Har harr. Old man! You're going to die soon.

You don't have to be a genius to extract the bias and see the real message: McCain is effective.

By the way, the hackles article about Cruz depicted him as too young — hadn't been around long enough to be speaking with intensity and passion.

Hacks!

ADDED: I deleted a line that was in this post for a couple minutes: "by the way, hackles are not feathers." I based that on what I'd read — quickly — in the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary when I wrote the "hackles" post about Cruz:

The hackles of a cock are erected when he is angry; hence with the hackles up, said also of a dog on the point of fighting when the hairs at the top of the neck stand up or of a hound when near the fox and on the point of killing him, also transf. of a man when aroused. Hence hackles is sometimes put for hair, whiskers, etc.

I pictured the cock's comb, but reading more of the OED entry "hackle," I see:

The long shining feathers on the neck of certain birds, as the domestic cock, peacock, pigeon, etc. Also, the feathers on the saddle of a cock. a cock of a different hackle, an opponent of a different character.

Here's my meme for that media discipline: When they say hackles, I say hacks... The GOP is supposed to be dead, and you're at the grave's edge, old man. Old, old man. You look old. Old men when the say what they mean and they say it with passion seem like they're saying "get off my lawn." Har harr. Old man! You're going to die soon.

When a teenager has his heart set on a sporty, red car, he doesn't want to hear his father asking questions like, 'how will you make the payments?' or 'how much will insurance cost?' or 'why does that red light keep coming on?' The teenager just wants to feel good about himself and to have his friends think he's cool.And the car salesman knows this.

I have yahoo as my start page and it seems that everyday there is a headline that makes the Republicans look bad. I don't see how a Republican can ever again get elected president. One of the things I didn't take into consideration in the last two elections is that a lot of older people have died, those older people remembered how our country once was but they have died and been replaced with younger voters who have no idea, they haven't even been taught any history unlike older generations. Young people have to live and learn from life experiences and they aren't there yet. I can remember some of my votes when I was young and I'm just glad there wasn't a Facebook back then.

So the press is going to start digging into Republicans based on age? There are currently 4 Senators with a (D) after their names that are more ancient than McCain: Frank Lautenberg (89), Dianne Feinstein (79), Carl Levin (78), Barbara Mikulski (76).

McCain has "in the words of “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, gone on a “seven-year quest to negate every good thing he’d ever done.”"

My respect for John McCain rises in inverse proportion to the leftist/Marxist disdain for him. If these despicable people loathe him so much, perhaps we need to reconsider our opinion of him. Perhaps, the old man has finally found his principles.

Yes Yahoo News has abandoned any pretence of neutrality, always bad but in the last year even worse. Add in their Bloombergy sissy food articles ("hamburgers bad awful. eat kale chips instead") and I can only stay for sports.

Dreams - You are correct. It's all part of the plan. The leftwing media are dishonest and misleading. The leftwing media operate to give impressions with half-truths and falsehoods in order to please their masters. Yahoo news isn’t news. Yahoo News is opinion masquerading as news.

The actual war going on is over media approved Big Lies that spout out of oracle Obama.

That makes my over 60 generation his worst enemy to be ridiculed and made into an isolated and ignored enemy of the people. Our crime is that we can remember so much truth from living the past 50 years.

I don't think McCain would have been a good president but we wouldn't have Obamacare, as big a debt as Obama's big spending caused and I don't buy the argument that McCain would have got us into a lot wars, on the contrary, I think he would been better in that regard especially as to our relations with the middle east. Those who have fought in wars tend to have a greater appreciation of war and thus more wiser when considering getting into war.

Still think that Mccain as president would have been worse than Obama?

I think that it is most likely that a lot of things would be very different. - Obamacare would not have become law- We would not have backed the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab Spring, Egypt would probably still be an ally, etc.- Fast and Furious would have been less likely- A lot more transparency, - If a Benghazi had happened on his watch, the U.S. would have gone in fast and heavy, and he would have spent the night in the WH situation room. We are talking an academy trained retired Navy captain, offered flag rank, whose father and grandfather of the same name were full admirals. People like that lead from the front, and don't leave people behind.

Not sure who "Junior" is. McCain is the third (and, yes, there is a fourth, also an Annapolis grad), Obama is the second, and Bush (43) has a different middle name than his father, so is neither. None are juniors. AlGore maybe?

Back in the early 2000s, the EPA under Bush proposed altering a Clean Air Act Rule. The rule is called New Source Review and, not to get too technical, the way the rule was originally designed, it encouraged older industrial sites NOT to reduce emissions through projects that would increase efficiency. (Basically, if, say a power plant wanted to re-build a gas turbine to make it use less gas to produce more electricity, the plant had to go through NSR, which was extremely costly and required adoption of stricker emission control technology -- however, if the plant stayed inefficient and didn't make changes, they could pollute at their old level without issue). Anyway, so the Bush EPA proposed changing the rule to promote efficiency. The new rule was better for the environment and better for industry. What the press did on this story is complete malpractice -- basically made Bush out to be the worst polluter in the history of bad people. Since I have quite a bit of expertise in this area, it was the first time I knew for a fact the press was misrepresenting as story to damage the political process. Fast forward to what Candy Crowly did to Romney in the presidential debate -- it's very rotten and severely hurting the country.

Republicans senators tend be from places where what the NYT editorial board thinks doesn't matter much, such as the southwest. Where the NYT agenda does matter, as in, say, New England there are very few of them (2 senators, no congressmen). So the feather ruffling they do only annoys people far from home who they don't care about. So suck it NYT. McCain is the outlier. He's a brain damaged goof who AZ keeps re-electing out of kindness I suppose.

If McCain had been elected president amnesty would have gone into overdrive on day one of his administration. Which is to say either head of the two headed socialist monstrosity serves to murder America and usher in America II.

If the Reps did go belly up I'm not sure who or what would replace it as the opposition party. The two parties have totally institutionalized themselves in the laws of the state now. The Reps have an automatic ballot access everywhere up and down the ballots. If the institutional GOP disappeared all manner of kooks nuts and odd balls would avail themselves of the chance to run, esp. in places where they get state matching funds. For about a decade or so after Ross Perot's Reform Party got ballot automatic full ballot access here in MI all manner of strange people got on the ticket, a few were even elected although none lasted. Look at MA. The reps can't even get a sacrificial lamb to run for senate to replace SoS Kerry.